Di Ionno: Fighting bullies is not just a job, but a mission for Morris County Prosecutor

View full sizeRobert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerMorris County Prosecutor Robert Bianchi speaks in court last year.

MORRISTOWN — Robert Bianchi was talking about back in the day, when his father, Angelo “Buddy” Bianchi, a Newark homicide cop, taught him how to deal with bullies. It was age-old, father-to-son advice.

Punch ’em back.

Bianchi did it then, and as Morris County prosecutor, he’s doing it now.

“We’re using the criminal justice system to make people step up,” Bianchi said during an interview in his office Thursday. “For too long, people — and I mean adults — have run away from this problem. We now have the criminal justice system involved in prosecuting these cases. It makes a strong point. Sometimes a bully has to be bullied.”

New Jersey’s anti-bullying law, first passed in 2002, was amped up in January 2011, fast-tracked through Trenton after Tyler Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

Now the anti-bullying campaign has a new face: Lennon Baldwin, the 15-year-old Morristown High freshman who hanged himself in his home in March. Three Morristown students have been charged with a variety of assault and robbery charges and making terroristic threats against the boy in the weeks before his death.

This is Bianchi’s case, and you can see the passion rise in his face when he talks about it. Its color is red.

“For these kids who get bullied, every day is a living hell,” he said. “They’re vulnerable, they’re isolated and weak, and the kids who go after them are cowards.

“This is the biggest scourge in the teenage community,” he said. “Drugs used to be the No. 1 problem in schools. Now it’s this.”

The new law is not a piece of feel-good, knee-jerk legislation. It’s more like an uppercut, thrown by police to loosen up a longtime, closed-mouth culture.

Bianchi said the law, pushed by Gov. Chris Christie after Clementi’s suicide, “addresses the reality of school bullying.” It requires schools to report cases of assaults, harassment, robberies and all other bullying crimes to police.

FacebookA Facebook photo of Morristown High School student Lennon Baldwin, whose death is under investigation.

No more sweeping it under the rug, or letting the dean of discipline handle it. No more having parents or coaches of bullies saying, “It’s just kid stuff.” No more having parents of the bullied feeling they have nowhere else to turn.

“This law is very focused and precise: It’s about communication between schools and law enforcement,” he said. “Now if an offense is committed in school, it won’t be overlooked. I’m hopeful that will be a deterrent.”

Bianchi said part of addressing the reality is education, and his office is constantly on the road, talking to schoolkids and administrators about the consequences of bullying — for victims and perpetrators.

“We’re doing what the DARE program did a generation ago,” he said. “Did it eradicate drug use? No. But I’m sure it made an awful lot of kids stop and think first. We’re doing the same thing with the bullying issue.”

In the four years since Bianchi has been prosecutor, his office has held 361 presentations or symposiums on bullying for kids, parents and school officials. At schools, they’ve talked in front of mandatory assemblies or smaller groups, reaching about 20,000 students, and about 3,000 adults in evening meetings.

“Sometimes you go, and you get nothing but crickets,” he said. “Other times, they’re jam-packed.”

In many cases, Bianchi said, it’s the parents of kids being bullied who show up. Parents of bullies? Most are oblivious.

“Sometimes the places where we have the most problems are the places that make the least (parental) investment,” he said.

That’s a euphemism for another endemic problem: parents turning a blind eye to their children’s behavior.